By My Shoulder
by ReadyFred-ReadyGeorge
Summary: *Spoilers for Volume 3 Ch. 12* The team begins the long road to Haven, facing the pain of loss, self-doubt and the looming evil on the horizon as they go. Yet even for all that pain may weigh them down, victory may yet be in a simple soul after all. I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee. -Major Arkos- -Bumbleby to come-
1. Chapter 1 - The Road To Haven

_**DISCLAIMER: This is purely a work of fan fiction. I do not own RWBY.**_

 _ **AN: I put this fic idea together within about two hours of seeing the Volume 3 Finale; the episode was a perfect end from a storytelling perspective, and opened up the Saga of Remnant in so many ways, it lived up to it's title of 'The End of the Beginning.' But that said, nothing these past two days has kept losing Phyrra from my mind, I get so emotionally invested in the shows I love that when I lose the characters that I look up to, it leaves me physically devastated. So I'm writing this fic, to pick up the threads of the story where Volume 3 finishes up, taking some cues from unanswered questions in earlier volumes. This is my prediction for the plotline of season 4 of RWBY, I do not work for Rooster Teeth nor am I affiliated with them in any capacity (though Christ I wish I did!). This is simply my wild, hopeful speculation of how this will go. -RFRG**_

 _ **For it is in passing that we achieve immortality.**_ __

Ch.1 The Road to Haven.  
 _  
"Do you believe in destiny?"_

 _It took near a full second for him to notice the arrow. The ringing in his ears stopped. The bounding of his leaden heart in his throat stopped. His panicked breathing stopped. Everything in all of creation, for one last heartbeat, stopped. For a moment, all was peaceful, all was tranquil, all was as a hazy autumn afternoon before the chill to come. He felt his bronze warplate rise and fall with the faint, but steady motion of his chest, felt the cool metal of his greaves channelling the chill of the stone below, He felt every strand of his scarlet hair catch the breeze in an elegant bid for freedom. In that single moment, he was at one with life itself._

 _Then he saw the arrow sticking out of his chest._

 _He didn't scream, he couldn't, the fire erupting within his breast had robbed him of whatever breath his punctured lung had spared. He was aflame at the molecular level, his soul was on fire. And there was nothing in all of creation but pain…pain…and her…and then all was ash._

 _"JAUNE!"_

He awoke screaming, the noise clattering off the walls of the cave with discordant fury, a cry of inhuman agony, of pure undiluted grief that could have woken the dead for miles. Sweat ran in greasy rivers off his brow, salting his cheeks and matting his golden hair…

 _Gold? Not Red?_

The scream died in his throat, choked on the spluttering gurgle that chased it from his vocal cords. He tore at his hair, fingers wrenching free whole tufts of yellow thread as he desperately sought for the maddened proof that refused to let him dream, hoping against hope for crimson. He stared at the strands of hair in his palm, tears welling in his eyes. _Gold…._

Gold meant that he was himself.

Gold meant that Jaune Arc was alive.

Gold meant that she was still dead.

He didn't know how long he cried, the tears had clouded his vision, the pain of his waking nightmare dulling his mind. It wasn't until he felt strong arms around him, until suddenly a shoulder was there that he could lay his head against, that he became aware of his surroundings – that he, begrudgingly, came back to the vague peripheries of life.

Nora held her leader in a tender grip, kneeling against the cold stone of the cave floor, her bare knees scabbed and bruised from having tripped a moment ago. She had been on watch duty when Jaune's scream had startled her, sending her off balance and clattering to the floor like a toddler taking her first steps. She didn't begrudge him the state of her knees though, she knew exactly how he felt, his pain was hers too. So the Valkyrie held the warrior tenderly, and wordlessly, as his sobs subsided, as his breathing steadied, as the slumber of grief reclaimed him and he began to snore quietly once more.

She laid Jaune against his rucksack, which was serving as a makeshift pillow, and returned to the cave-mouth, where she had left Maginhild, and her personal woes for a minute. This was the third time in as many days that Jaune had been overtaken by nightmares; always they had been followed by some form of frenzied self-discovery; tearing at his hoodie, cutting his hands on Crocea Mors, now tearing out his own hair. Always with the maddened stare of a zealot who knows exactly what he will find, but hopes against all reason that he will discover the opposite. The first two times, Jaune's terrified cries had woken Ruby and Ren, their comrades as much disturbed by the maddened anguish of their friend as they were by their own inability to help. Ruby had tried to calm Jaune with words of reassurance, Ren had tried something similar in his own awkward, shy way, but neither of them had had much effect, only Nora's silent guardianship had worked in lulling the fitful boy back to an uneasy, but much needed sleep. This time, the others had been away scouting, leaving Jaune, exhausted from three days journey and his own nightmares sapping at his sleep, under Nora's watch. She was glad, though she knew that they were well into Grimm territory by now, she also knew that Ruby and Ren would be much more in their element, and much more comfortable, slaying a horde of Beowolves, than watching their beloved friend tear himself apart, unable to help.

Nora sat against the cave wall, staring watchfully out at the forest. It had taken them a full day of hiking through the forests of Patch to reach the coast, plus two full days of piloting the dilapidated, but serviceable motorboat that they had purchased off a Patch fisherman for most of their lien. The boat itself had coughed and spluttered itself to death a few hours before Nora began her vigil, but it had carried them well to the north east of the continent, far from the prying eyes of the survivors still rebuilding the wrecked city of Vale. It had served its purpose. Nora fished around in her rucksack for their dog-eared map, their only source of direction out here, so far from any form of scroll signal. She smirked to herself, amused at how often she had lecturered Ren about being a bookworm, only for her to now be the studious one; her sense of direction and geography, drummed into her over long, tedious hours of studying with her partner, was near-perfect. Academia may have had its uses after all. 

_Rustle_

Her ears pricked up at the noise. Maginhild was in her hand in a heartbeat, grenade-launcher form ready and loaded. Her eyes scanned the undergrowth, tracking for targets, her huntress' instincts readying her for the fight to come.

"Brrrcawww."

She cocked an eyebrow, tilting her head towards the bushes, the source of the strange sound. It took her a heartbeat before a smile wound its way across her features.

"I guess that's not what a sloth sounds like after all." She mused, a chuckle escaping her lips as Ren picked his way through the bush, awkwardly sifting a path through the bushes, trying to stop the branches from whipping back and hitting the smaller girl he had in tow, with minimal success.

"Owww! Oww! Owww!" Ruby moaned as the umpteenth twig to abuse her that day _thwacked_ her unceremoniously in the face as she trod in Ren's wake through the underbrush. 'Stupid tree." She cursed as they both finally broke free of the tangle of roots and branches. Nora, feeling elated for the first time that day, skipped her way down to her teammates, pulling them both into a bone-crunching hug, much to the protest of one sorely winded Ren.

"Nora…can't breathe…" he croaked, prompting the hammer-wielder to release him, leaving him more than a little unsteady on his feet. "I've had enough trouble getting sideswiped by Beowolves already today without you choking me."

"Aww, poor baby!" she teased, eliciting a giggle from Ruby. "So, how'd the scouting go?"

"We found the east road from the map," chimed in the other girl, "It's about a mile and a half back that way, and with any luck, the route to it should stay clear of Grimm for at least a few hours."

That was something at least, Nora consulted the map again as the three of them made their way back up to the cave in which they had sought shelter. They were a few miles inland, in heavily forested territory, but they had deliberately aimed to reach the mainland at its northern peninsula, the smallest expanse of land before they reached the Mistralian ocean. Acording to the map, their newly discovered road was a straight shot to the sea, three days travel at most. After that, they had the problem of traversing several hundred miles of ocean to the south and east, but they would cross that metaphorical bridge when they came to it. Even then though, their trek would be entirely in hostile territory; the nearest town was either miles off-course, or on the opposite coast itself.

Nora grimaced, the last few days had been an emotional test on many different levels. For Ruby and Ren, Nora keeping up her usual bubbly enthusiasm was of the utmost importance. She could sense the waves of doubt flowing from her partner; they had already lost a teammate, and she knew it was taking all of Ren's effort to not try and convince them to turn back lest they lose another– he had sworn that he was up for this, they all had, but she knew he had done it only because it was one thing to fear losing a comrade beside you in battle, but something wholly worse to sit at home alone, watching the horizon, praying that your loved ones came back from a fate you could not share with them. Ruby on the other hand, was a veritable mixed-bag of emotion – she kept up her usual unflappable demeanour, but it wasn't hard to notice the guilt under the surface, the pain at failing to save Pyrrha, the pain of losing her sister to self-doubt and anguish, of running away from her father who only wanted to know his girls were safe. Right now Nora's enthusiasm was the only thing keeping Ren's doubt and Ruby's guilt from swallowing them whole – it was keeping their minds on the task at hand, and on lighter things, and not from the demons eating way at them.

And then there was Jaune.

The blonde boy had been nearly silent on the road so far, save for monosyllabic or minimally worded responses when directly questioned. he'd even handled his motion sickness on the boat with barely a complaint. No amount of bubbly jokes and the like could elicit much beyond a fleeting smile. Their leader had retreated wholly into himself, lost in memory, lost in grief. Nora could sense the strength in him fighting back at the pain, strength scrounged up from the memories of the woman who'd loved him, and whom he had, far too late, learned to love in return. The struggle within him was hidden behind a mask of introspective neutrality; the victory was displayed in every onward step Jaune took with the group, the trade-off being that he said hardly a word, lest his grief betray him with each syllable. All Nora could do for Jaune was hold him when the nightmares set in, when he couldn't defend himself against the agony. All she could do was hold him, and hope that each day, he continued to walk onwards. To his credit, he had yet to disappoint.

Jaune was awake by the time they returned. Bleary-eyed, haggard, sweat still matting his brow, but awake nonetheless. He acknowledged Nora with a nod and a rare smile, which she returned, silent thanks for her calming him from his waking nightmares again, even if sleep had ultimately eluded him. Ruby bounded up to him, beaming broadly, and pulled him into a tight hug before he could back away, with barely perceptible effort, he returned it, before she retreated to a respectful distance. Ruby knew that Jaune needed space, but that a carefully placed hug was usually quietly appreciated – she let Nora do the legwork though once the screaming started.

"Are we moving out?" Jaune asked the group.

"That's the plan, a mile south east to the road, then three days hike straight east." Nora said matter-of-factly, rolling up the map and grabbing her pack, pilfering a ration bar out of a side-pouch – breakfast would be portable as always, they had a lot of ground to cover and the sooner they reached Mistral, the better.

"Alright," acknowledged Jaune, in what Nora knew would be his last words for several hours, before rolling up his bedroll and snapping up some rations of his own. As the four of them left their temporary abode, Nora took a glance at the sun beginning to crest the horizon, taking comfort in the fact that no matter how dire the night may be, or even how dreadful the days passed had been, the sun would always rise, and there would always be a tomorrow in which to right the wrongs of today. She smiled broadly at her inner poet, hefting Maginhild onto her shoulder as she strode through the trees, beginning a tuneless warble about nothing in particular, but knowing the random assortment of notes would keep Ruby amused for a while.

Jaune trailed at the back of the group, listening quietly as Nora, and now Ruby and even Ren laid brutally into a tune about a tap-dancing Beowolf, a bawdy number that wouldn't have been out of place in a tavern after a few rounds. He was thankful that due to his friends' efforts, there were no actual Beowolves around to hear them. He appreciated everything Nora was doing for their spirits, especially his own, even if it was just a case of a few well-placed hugs and some terrible singing. But for now, he had to stay quiet. Because if he let himself get too distracted by his friends, he would miss her.

She walked next to him with the same effortless, fluid grace she had possessed in life. Where he had to sidestep a tree or duck under a branch, she melted through it as though it were smoke, only to appear out the other side, her stride unbroken, her smile unwavering. Now and again, they would stop for a moment, and just stare wordlessly into each other's eyes. Sometimes he would turn and she would be gone, only to appear sitting idly in the next tree, and the next, and the next, or around the next corner, leaning against a tree trunk, and the next and the next. More often than not though, she would just walk at his side, her spectre channelling the strength he needed in his heart to take each step. Her hand ghosted into his grip, so tender, so soft, he almost felt it, it and the parting kiss she had left him – her final gift before her last battle, still he could taste her on his lips, long months later. Where she walked now, winter's touch could not harm him. Where she whispered in his ear, his doubts melted away. With each of her strides, he matched pace. Never did they say a word. Never did they need to. One look into her emerald eyes, eyes that were there and not there, said it all.

 _I love you Pyrrha, I love you and I will see you again, one way or another._

With his friends ahead, and his love beside and beyond, Jaune Arc kept on walking. 

She sat on the camp bed, her head resting on her clenched fists. She gripped the unwound black bow tightly in her small hand, fighting back the tears that threatened to cascade loose from her bloodshot eyes. How many people had she failed because of this bow? How many people had she failed because she had hidden her identity? How many people had she failed because of the White Fang? And yet here she was, running as she always had, first from the madmen who had perverted everything she stood for, and now from the victims, the people she loved. She rose unsteadily to her feet, tossing the bow that had been her constant companion away from her in disgust. She dried her eyes with the back of her palm, and with the air of a confidence she in no way felt, Blake Belladonna strode out from her tent, and into the compound. Everywhere she looked, there was nothing but the same white uniforms that had haunted her, that had hunted her, for so long. The same scarlet, snarling emblem that stalked her nightmares like the predators it's fanatics modelled themselves on. She had run all her life, and it had carried her back here. But now she wasn't running, not the scared flight of a terrified alley cat. Now she had a mission, now she had something to walk towards, not away from, even if it meant that she was reduced to tears whenever prying eyes darted away. She reached the command tent and entered before she could muster a second thought.

He didn't look up, he didn't smile. She was glad, if he had, she might have killed him there and then. Instead, she swallowed her pride, muffled her pain, and stared into his eyes, and begged her defiance wouldn't show in her own, that it would be hidden behind the tears.

"Adam, what's the plan?"

 _ **Coming up next: Chapter 2 – The White Fang.**_ ****

 **This story will be updated regularly – work on chapter 2 starts tonight! Reviews are, as always, much appreciated! Many thanks, and hope you enjoy. Happy Valentines Day RWBY-lovers!  
**


	2. Chapter 2 - The White Fang

_**I still don't own RWBY, and I had nothing to do today, so I stayed up late to write another chapter. Let me know what you think, reviews are love!**_

Chapter 2: The White Fang.

Weiss didn't hate her father. Sometimes, she had tried to, others she had tried not to and felt like she had failed. But ultimately, in her heart of hearts, she couldn't bring herself to truly hate him. Not for long at any rate. She held his gaze though, no respectful aversion of the eye, no curtsey, no deference. Weiss Schnee held her father's gaze, and felt, not hatred…but pity.

Franz Schnee's expression of nonchalance and authority had been carefully moulded over the years. He'd built his every mannerism around that powerful, yet neutral visage. It helped him appear regal and calculating in the boardroom and reinforced his proud position as the Schnee patriarch. The only downside of that image was that it made for awful parenting. Yet for all that she could tell her father was currently regarding her not unlike a business venture gone sour, with a detached, sober and compartmentalised gaze that held all the warmth of a graveyard, there was still an inkling of care in his eyes, that much was obvious even to her. It was not that her father did not care for either of his daughters; it was just that he didn't _know_ how to love them. He had raised Winter and Weiss as his father had raised him, and as Franz's grandmother had raised his father; from a distance, through nannies and butlers, manservants and bodyguards. Everything Weiss had ever wanted had been funded by the best credit in Remnant, and provided for by the best that money could buy, from the moment she had been thrust into the world, bawling and pink, until the moment she'd refused his phonecall all those months ago at the festival. The only route Franz had taken in parenting was to lead wallet-first, and a disciplined, guiding hand…the only way he knew how.

So she didn't hate him, she couldn't.

But she was by no means pleased to see him.

"Daughter," he began, tone haughty, yet strained, as though confused that his forays into parenthood had led him down the route of teenage rebellion, as though any parent's path did not, "What shall I do with you?"

"I beg your pardon father, to what are you referring?" The words came out of her mouth before she had a chance to bite back the acid in her syllables. She stared wide-eyed at her own defiance, yet Franz did not react, save to lift his monogrammed teacup to his lips and take a practiced sip.

"I am referring, _daughter,"_ he replied, making 'daughter' sound as much like 'subordinate' as he could, eliciting a wince from Weiss, "To whatever it is that has motivated you to cross land and sea, to avoid this family." He sighed, rising from his chair and turning to face the floor-to-ceiling window behind him, staring out at the snowy, grey expanses of Atlas city. "That you wished to be a huntress I could accept, much as I accepted your sister's desire to be a soldier. That you wished to do so at Beacon, I could understand, the school's record speaks for itself and Ozpin was a good man…"

"Is."

"I beg your pardon?" He turned to face her and cocked an eyebrow, the angle of each hair communicating perfectly his distaste at being interrupted.

"You said he _was_ a good man father. Nobody has reported Professor Ozpin dead as of yet. May we assume, please, that he still _is_ a good man?" Weiss said, slowly, finding her courage more and more with every word. Father and daughter locked eyes for a moment, a silent battle for control of the conversation in each blink, and each jerk of the eyelids. After several seconds that felt like hours, Franz sighed.

"Ozpin _is,_ a good man," he continued his lecture quickly so as to not give Weiss too much chance to savour his retreat, "And again, Beacon has turned out exceptional huntsmen, with that I have no issue." He turned back to the window again, seemingly taking reassurance at the sight of Atlas' perfectly symmetrical, geometrically identical architecture spread out before him. "What I take issue with, is your hurling yourself into danger beyond the ability of anyone your age, your flouting of my contact and your insistence on working with ruffians and _terrorists."_

Weiss was stunned, her shock knocking her back a step, she stood there, mouth agape, wide-eyed. How could he know about Blake? How could he know who she was?

"Did you think, daughter, that I would not do my research when I discovered you had been assigned a team? It was hard enough knowing that the prodigies of that drunken fool of a huntsman Qrow were around you night and day, it was harder still knowing you took _orders_ from one of them, and the younger one to boot! But a member of the White Fang, former or otherwise, instilling her disgusting, fundamentalist, _faunus_ ways into my daughter. That I would not sanction."

Now she hated him. She hated him with every fibre of her being. From every hair that stood up on the back of her neck in shock, to every finger that was itching to curl their way around Myrtenaster's pommel, and every atom in between.

"By what right do you judge them?" Between her consuming resentment of her situation, compounded with her disgust at her father's words and the realisation that she had actually moved to take up her weapon, however slightly, It took Weiss a good moment to realise that it was not her who had spoken.

"By what right, _father_ , do you judge those who have stood at Weiss' side, and fought back to back with her." Winter Schnee's voice was laden with venom as she stalked out from the boardroom doorway, right up to Franz, and stared him down with a glare that could have killed an Ursa at a hundred paces. "If there's one thing I have learned from the army it's that those who will willingly share a foxhole with you are your family first and foremost. Regardless of heritage."

Winter gazed over at her sister, encouraging her on with every word and glance. Weiss had always loved Winter, regardless of how distant she could be, or how demanding, Winter had never let her believe anything less than the best about herself, because Winter had never believed anything but the best of her. She had never Weiss give up on who she could be, whether that was pushing her to master her summoning, or egging her on now. Weiss realised in that moment, more than ever before, that she may have lacked a good father, or even a father at all…but she had the greatest sister in the world.

"If someone will bleed for you, bleed _with_ you, it matters not what blood pours forth, human or faunus, what matters is they shed it by your side, in the same trench, for the same goal, for the same cause. So I ask again, by what right…"

"By my right as her father!" Franz thundered, his fist slamming into the oaken desk, shaking Weiss from her reverie. The younger Schnee found her resolve, a fire lighting under her, her fury at hearing her loved ones slandered igniting with and strode up to said desk, planting her hands on it to steady herself, her eyes communicating a silent thanks to her sister for the backup, and that she had it from here, before locking her gaze onto her fathers' own.

"You have no right to slander my friends. You have no right to slander my loved ones. I don't care if Ruby and Yang's uncle is a drunk, they aren't. I don't care about what the White Fang did to the company, I don't care what they did to _us!"_ Weiss could feel her father's fury being quenched with her every syllable, his practiced visage had shattered, first by his own anger at his eldest daughter's intrusion, and now again at the verbal assault of his youngest. Franz's face was a cracked mask of pure shock, bleached of colour, devoid of the cold fire that had gripped him before. "Blake stood by me, even after I drove her away once, she came back, she fought beside me, comforted me, they all did! Each member of Team RWBY has been twice the family member you have _ever been!_ So you can call Blake a terrorist and slander her heritage, you can write off Ruby and Yang, but don't ever expect me to do so. They're my _family_ now!"

She turned on her heel, she didn't look back. She didn't see Franz Schnee's first ever expression of defeat, nor her sister's look of pride as she herself walked away, not feeling the need to berate their already emotionally slaughtered father any further. Weiss Schnee turned on her heel and strode out the door, straight-backed and head held high, her foe conquered, her pride soaring.

All Franz could think was that despite it all, Weiss was now more deserving of the name 'Schnee' than anyone had ever been.

Adam had not answered her question, instead he had chosen to pace around the back of the command tent, his shoulders hunched like a coiled spring, a predator about to pounce. Blake's eyes tracked him left and right, she was not so much afraid of him deciding to attack her here out of hand, as much as she was simply afraid of him, period. Adam Taurus was a long way from the man he had once been, the good-hearted, if fanatical partner that she had abandoned on the train. She had seen him cut down Yang in cold blood, paying the blow that severed her arm no more heed than he would squashing a fly. He had set Beacon ablaze with the zeal of a madman, and slaughtered every innocent in his path. 

Everyone on his path to her.

Yang's image haunted her, refusing to run from behind her eyes. The fire in her gaze as she charged Blake's attacker, the sorrow in her tone as she gave her the pep talk before the dance, her unbound joy as she swayed and sashayed Blake in her arms at the ball itself, drinking in the rare joy of her partner on that most beautiful of nights. Yang had been there for her from the very beginning; the girl who'd described her as a 'lost cause' when all she wanted to do was read and ignore the world, had fought back to back with her against a tide of Grimm and forged her most enduring friendship to date. The raw, untamable fury that Yang had unleashed upon Adam in that charge had been almost poetic in it's beautiful power, yet she had still been cut down almost without effort. _I will kill everything you love, starting with her._

 _Everything you_ love…

It was Adam's lieutenant who spoke, his gravelly tones spelling out what Adam's silence did not care to put to words, snapping her back to her unwelcome reality. "Our plan is simple – infiltrate the kingdom from underneath and decapitate it's leadership structure. We lack Cinder Fall's resources for this mission, so we will have to be more covert than the assault on Beacon." The lieutenant looked to Adam, his expression as always unreadable behind his full-face mask, but the weight of his silence spoke of a man asking permission to continue. Adam responded only with a single nod to his compatriot before he resumed his pacing.  
The lieutenant's posture eased, and he gestured Blake forward to a table at the centre of the tent, where a map of their target had been laid out; a large mansion complex, on a hill overlooking the city of Vale. Blake realised in a dreadful heartbeat that this must be the 'safe zone' that Glynda and Ironwood had established within the city limits during the attack; even though the populace had long since returned home, this mansion would still be serving as a nerve-centre by Beacon's professors to coordinate the recapture of the school.

Adam was not about to settle for a job half-done, now the White Fang would close in on more of Blake's friends. And here she was, amongst them, banking her very life on the chance to minimise whatever damage she was forced to cause, because that was better than the alternative of painting targets on her friends' backs if she ran again. She swallowed hard, and loudly, her fear escaping the notice of neither of the two men.

"We will infiltrate the mansion from the sewer-system; here." The lieutenant gestured to a cistern pipeline that ran parallel to a cellar wall. "We will force entry with a controlled explosion and fan out to secure the premesis. We can expect little in the way of enemy numbers, but each foe will be a huntsman or huntress, so we can expect casualties to mount." He pointed to the diagram of the upper-floor, which had an observatory room with a glass ceiling. "Team B will attack from above here, cutting off any chance of aerial escape, whilst Team C will force entry from the pipeline in the front driveway and block off the front door. We will surround the foe and eliminate them with superior numbers."

Blake digested the plan slowly, her mind flashing through the faces of those she was about to betray; those friends that she now had no choice but to turn her blade on. _Glynda, Oobleck, Port, Yang, Velvet, Coco, Yang, Fox, Yatsu, Yang, always Yang…._ Every ounce of her willpower was sapped in desperately trying to not let any emotion make it to her face, but her armour was not as strong as it used to be. It had cracked forever the moment she saw her partner slam into the ground with a thud of pure finality, her arm spinning away across the room. Blake Belladonna was on the verge of tears and still she fought desperately. The White Fang knew the emotional turmoil that she went through every night, such was her punishment in their eyes. But she had re-sworn her oaths to the cause, however reluctantly. To display doubt here, when the plan was about to be put in motion, would court death. Not only that, but Adam would see it as an open invitation to follow through on his plan to destroy everything she loved. In her mind's eye, she saw her partner again, collapsed against the concrete, slowly bleeding out, so frail, so vulnerable; it had been agony to see someone normally so strong reduced so far, an agony compounded by the knowledge that it had been all her fault.

 _Everything you love…_

She could not let that happen again. She swallowed hard, and stared at the map, forcing her mind back onto the mission.

"What would you have me do?" She surprised herself with how emotionless she managed to sound, but even her elation at maintaining her disguise had to be suppressed, lest it betray her.

"You will join Master Taurus and myself in the assault squad, your mission will be to eliminate any Beacon students and graduates in our path, whilst we eliminate the professors. With the remaining Huntsmen dead, the Vale council will not be able to resist our forces as we take over the city."

"The first step towards our new world has already been taken." Adam had finished his pacing, arriving at her side with a measured, deliberate step, his voice was honeyed with the promise of victory, yet to her every word reeked of death, despair and bloodlust. Gone was the Adam she had known once. This was nothing more than a beast. A Grimm wearing his skin. "We will make Vale a safe haven for our people by casting out those humans who oppressed us, and the blood-traitor faunus who stood at their side." Blake's mind flashed forth an image of Velvet; Velvet the humble, the gentle. Velvet, who had so much power at her fingertips, whose mage abilities made her one of the strongest, if not _the_ strongest warrior Blake had ever known, yet who would not even hurt a fly, who would not even strike back at her own bullies, because she couldn't bring herself to wreak harm. Blake could not imagine what qualified Velvet to be a traitor to anyone. How could you be someone's enemy by being a good person? The thought sickened Blake to the core.

"We struck the first head off the King Taijitu, now the other head falls with it. This is our moment _my love."_ He stroked her hair with a gentle caress – she had lived for those touches once, that approval, that care – she had never loved him entirely the way he had desired her, but she had still looked up to him and craved his attention, that justification that she belonged where she was, with her White Fang brothers and sisters. Now that touched repelled her very soul, and like everything else, like every other evil word that spilled from Adam Taurus' mouth, it took her every effort not to draw Gambol Shroud and make one last show of running him through then and there. Instead, she tolerated his hand as it caressed her face, as it drew her chin up to look him in the eye.

"Now the White Fang strikes."

She felt the pain flare up her left arm, and just as suddenly it was gone; blooming forth with white hot fury, snuffed out in a second. Her gaze fell to the needle still stuck in her forearm, blackness creeping in around the edges of her vision as the numbness spread, blasting through her bloodstream like an unstoppable wave. Her legs failed her just before her eyes did, but the feeling had gone long before she hit the floor – little more than a dull sensation of having stopped moving as her back slapped against the cold ground. She saw Adam looming over her, grinning like a dervish, like a child with a new favourite toy, but with all the innocent glee perverted by zealotry and pain. She saw his leering smile, one that she knew would haunt her nightmares for many weeks to come.

And then she saw no more.

Weiss sat at the edge of her bed, unsteady hands shakily gripping her coffee mug, long after the drink had gone tepid. She stared at the ground, unwilling to meet her sister's gaze. The confidence she had displayed, the raw pride that had surged through her when she had strode from her father's boardroom, had barely carried her down the hallway before her legs sagged beneath her. She had locked herself in her room, castling herself in doubt, admitting nobody but the butler, who brought her meals, and now Winter, who had seated herself on the chair opposite, her own mug resting on the vanity behind her, her fingers forming contemplative steeples before her face. They had said nothing to each other in the ten minutes since Winter had entered, bringing a peace-offering of coffee. Weiss was glad of her company, but found herself with no idea as to how she should begin any form of conversation.

"Three days is a long time to spend alone Weiss, much less alone and deliberately cooped up."

"You should see Yang after a Friday night out, she'll spend three days asleep, forget cooped up." The humour came surprisingly easy to her, all things considered. She smiled and looked up at Winter for the first time, taking comfort in the mirrored smile etching its way across her features.

"Is that so? You should see the Special Operations Divison when we're on leave, it's a good job we get paid so well, because we drank a whole bar dry last time. I don't think I sobered up for a week."

"I find it hard to imagine you so much as touching alcohol," Weiss countered with mock chastisement.

"I found it hard to imagine you standing up to Father like that," Winter replied pointedly, reaching out a hand to Weiss' shoulder, steadying her little sister as she saw her eyes start to drop again. It was rare that Winter got to play the role of 'big sis' these days, but though she would admit it to nobody else, she revelled in it every single time. There was little in life, as she had once told Weiss, that equalled holding your little sibling in your arms and letting them know everything was alright. In a way, not even a parent could do it so well as a big brother or sister who put their mind to it, because they had faced all the same problems before so much more recently than the last generation, and knew how to deal with it, or provided solidarity when they didn't. Weiss had never met Ruby's father, but she had seen Yang gather up her baby sister into umpteen hugs, and never failing to restore a smile to Ruby's face – whether by the right word at the right time, or providing a face to use as pillow target practice. Weiss doubted that even Taiyang Xio Long, the man who'd raised her craziest teammates, could have that effect with the same rate of success.

"I had backup." Weiss meekly responded, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment, but her smile reforming all the same.

"Backup? I barely said a word. Dear sister, that was all you."

"What was that rant about foxholes then?"

" _What_ rant?" Winter replied pointedly, with an uncharacteristically mischevious and conspiratory wink.

"I love you big sis."

"And I you, Weiss, and I you."

 _Drip, Drip, Drip._

The staccato percussion of water on stone slowly lulled her back to reality. Her vision swam in and out of focus, not helped at all by the encroaching darkness on all sides. Then the smell hit her, startling her into full wakefulness. The stench of human waste assaulted her sensitive, heightened nostrils with wild abandon, forcing her to cough and splutter like a drowning rat. It was her raking coughs that drew her 'comrades' attention. A firm hand slapped her on the back, startling her from her coughing fit; the lieutenant's leering mask easing into her peripheral vision.

"Welcome back Miss Belladonna" he said, his voice a sober monotone.

"Why…why did you drug me?" She managed to find her voice on the second attempt, the slur in her words dragging itself away with each breath as clarity returned to her. She cast her eyes about and found herself in a sewer, her mind being cast back through what must have been several days of darkness before she latched onto the memory of the strategy meeting. This must be the cistern they had spoken of…and yet…

…something was wrong. Her mind was still hazy, but she could clearly remember that the cistern ran parallel to the mansion's cellar…so surely it couldn't be this big? She was in a tunnel at least twelve feet wide and twice that tall; leaving plenty of room for the thirty armed White Fang militiamen camped inside. Each wall was visibly thick as an Ursa, not something a 'controlled explosion' would handle without killing them all in the process. Wherever she was, in whatever godforsaken culvert she had woken up in, it was not the cistern they had planned to strike from.

"So you're awake at last, that's wonderful to see my love," Adam's voice preceded him out of the shadows. He stalked, blade drawn, visibly eager for the hunt to come, "Feeding you through a drip for three days was getting so tedious."

She gritted her teeth to hold her silence. Wanting nothing more in that moment than to rip Adam Taurus limb from limb.

"I'm so sorry about having to take you out of the equation for a while, but I promise I'll make it up to you. I couldn't spoil the surprise."

"Surprise?" she gritted out, rising to her feet unsteadily for the first time.

"I've taken you on a honeymoon my darling" he grinned his now trademarked insane smile, revelling in the madness he was about to unleash. He pivoted on his foot and brought Wilt up in a powerful arc. Blake had just enough time to shield her eyes before Adam brought his blade down on the wall to their left, smashing it asunder with an almighty crash like continents colliding. The cistern was drowned in smoke so thick it was almost solid, everything was blasted into a darkness so consuming that for a moment, even Blake's night vision could not spy her hand in front of her face. It took a full ten seconds for the smoke to clear enough that a faunus could see through it. The nearest two White Fang soliders had been thrown clear by the blast and had hit the opposite wall, they lay face down in the slow-flowing sewage, their necks at an angle that no living thing could emulate. Adam paid them not an ounce of heed. His eyes were focussed on the breach alone, the world at his back might as well have stopped existing.

Blake cast her eyes towards her gap in the wall. The hole was six feet wide and the same tall and led, much as the original plan had suggested, into what was visibly a wine cellar, replete with newly smashed bottles of what were likely priceless vintages. Only this cellar was, like the sewer that ran parallel to it, much larger than the schematics, and every surface was painted the same steel-grey, like polished gunmetal.

On the wall opposite the breach, partially shrouded by dust from the blast, was a symbol; a family crest. A snowflake emblazoned in pure, pearlescent white.

Blake's blood ran ice cold.

"Welcome, my love, to Atlas…and to the Schnee family mansion."

She looked up from her seat on the rear porch, the noise calling her back from her daydream with the familiar melody of a half-forgotten song. Her father stirred next to her, his expression startled, but with a stony edge. Yang cast her eyes about the back garden for the source of the cry, the single, solitary note of birdsong that had snagged their attention. She was on the verge of dismissing it as an overreaction and returning to her daydream, but her father had already got to his feet. Taiyang paced out onto the grass, his face set in a grimace of flint, but his eyes smouldering like charcoal. Despite everything, Yang was scared – she was easy to anger, such was how she manifested her semblance, but her father was a slow-burner. For something to have set his features, for which a mirthful smile was never more than a hair's breadth away, this aflame, awoke a fear in her that she could never remember feeling before.

"Dad? What's wrong?" she called tentatively, instinctively activating her single remaining gauntlet of Ember Celica. The halved weapon had not left her forearm since Ruby had vanished just under a week ago, it was a source of much needed strength to her and a font for what little courage remained to her. If she was not able to go after her sister, she would make sure she could defend their home with their father, so that Ruby had somewhere to come back to.

Taiyang paced further out into the garden, and cast his eyes up at the trees, charcoal eyes burning brighter with each step.

"Raven!" He called, the name making Yang's whole world stop for a moment, then two, then three before she remembered how to breathe, "I know you're there, come out!"

As if on cue, reality tore itself open some six feet away from where Taiyang stood unflinching; a black void that seemed to suck all light and all sound into it, leeching the breath of the world around it. Out from the black depths of the tear, stepped a tall, slender woman. Powerfully built for someone so thin, she was of a height with Yang, with long, flowing black hair that cascaded down her back in a never ending tide. At her hip was strapped the hilt of an enormous katana blade that looked to be as tall as she was, and under the crook of her arm, she carried a bone-white mask, crafted into the shape of a Nevermore's leering skull. Her scarlet eyes shone forth with a powerful aura that captivated the blonde girl with a single glance, shining out from a face that could have been the very image of Yang's own.

Frozen by shock, and riveted to the ground by disbelief, Yang Xio Long stared into her mother's eyes.

"Yang, we have so much to talk about."

 _ **Next Time: Chapter 3 – Quoth the Raven.**_


	3. Chapter 3 - Quoth The Raven

_**Disclaimer: I still don't own RWBY, but god I would love to…or at least I'd love to write for Rooster Teeth one day.**_

Chapter 3: Quoth The Raven.

He had avoided sleep altogether tonight. It was safer that way, he had told himself. Exhaustion was one thing, and all he had to do during the day was put one foot in front of the other; that and occasionally slay a few Beowolves, but adrenaline kicked in for that, to carry him through. He didn't need sleep, especially when he knew what slumber would bring. So instead he lay, uncomfortable and cramped on the small bed at the dingy seaside inn they had called in at a handful of hours before. The room smelled of mould, the fire in the hearth was tepid at best, but at least it wasn't a cave.

" _Do you believe in destiny?"_

She lay with him, gazing up into his eyes, one arm wrapped around his prone form. As always, she wore the armour she had died in, unblemished by her final battle; her face shone with the radiance he had always remembered, always cherished; the expression of thoughtful care, of patience. It had taken him too long to notice the love in her every emerald gaze, by the time he had, it was too late. But now, even if she wasn't truly real, save for the everlasting ache in his heart, he took every second he could to just sit and gaze and drink in her ethereal beauty. She lay there beside him, smiling up at him, nuzzled close to him, close and yet so far, cheating the void itself to finally lie in her beloved's arms. He was going slowly mad, he knew it, he was seeing things, grief had taken him to the precipice. But he didn't care, Jaune stood on the edge of madness…and all he wanted to do was fall. After all, she would catch him at the bottom.

" _It'll be dawn soon."_ She had spoken for the first time earlier today, her voice musical, but faint, like a song being sung softly in another room. It had only been his name, to get his attention, but the ears had welled up so thickly in his eyes that he had to stop walking for several minutes. He'd passed it off as a cramp to Nora, managing to wipe the tears away before she noticed, and letting the group go on ahead aways, so he could steal a few moments to talk to her, through himself. They had conversed for hours, idly talking about everything and nothing. He was going mad, he didn't want to rush the issue with a melodramatic outpouring, and she had seemed content to just chitchat. A conversation across the infinities, discussing the weather with insanity itself.

" _It'll be dawn soon, and you have an ocean to find your way across Jaune."_ She smiled softly, and planted a kiss to his cheek; a ghostly caress, there-and-not there, somewhere in the gap between sensation and imagination. He returned the smile, a single tear edging its way down his cheek, winding its way southwards, to be caught on her lips as she kissed him again, caressing away his sorrow in this stolen, mad moment of joy.

"Will you come with me?" he asked aloud softly, lifting a hand to caress her face, throwing all of his willpower behind the gesture, letting him _feel_ her just that little bit more, and imagine her just that little bit less. She laid her head against his palm, a light chuckle breezing its way through her lips.

" _Haven't I always?"_

Where did one begin a conversation with the parent one had never known? Yang stared into her coffee mug with trepidation, losing herself in her reflection on the surface of the brown liquid, contemplating a million things and one, lost in thought, lost in awkwardness. Lost.

Raven, to her credit, was clearly not having any easier a time of it. She tapped her fingers idly on her own mug, eyes darting about here, there and everywhere. She had said the two had so much to talk about, but finding the right words to begin could not have been harder. How did one bridge a gap between oneself and the daughter one had avoided for almost seventeen years? Mother and daughter sat little more than two feet from each other, but might as well have been leagues apart, just as they had been for all those long years.

"How have you been?" Raven began tentatively.

"Seventeen years of silence, and you start with ' _How have you been?"_ Taiyang had been pacing the room with the fervour of a cornered animal, cold fury having chased all the usual warmth from his eyes, but now he turned to face them, visibly forcing himself not to shout. " _How have you been? No apology, no explanation for why you left in the night, for why you left your own child before she even got a chance to know you?"_

"DAD!" Yang interrupted, turning a blazing glare on her father. The choler in Tai's eyes died in a heartbeat, the angry flame snuffed out by his daughter's own sudden fury. He sagged, shoulders slumping in defeat, eyes flashing a silent apology to his daughter as he pulled up a chair next to her. Tai rested his face on his upturned palms, his head slowly shaking from side to side as his brain tried to process the mind-bending scenario before him.

"It's alright, I deserve it." Raven spoke up, her head hung low, but her scarlet eyes seeking out Yang's own. The black-haired warrior looked set to continue, her courage found, a deep-breath taken, but she didn't get the chance.

"I don't care why you left." Yang's tone was light, but firm; it spoke of a soul who wanted answers, not apologies, one that had fumbled in the dark of the past for too long, and who wanted to move forward. "I'm sure you had your reasons, you wouldn't be the first parent to leave their child behind. But you came back once, you drove off that Neo-girl when I couldn't defend myself, so I know that somewhere deep down, you always cared." Yang sighed, taking a steadying sip of coffee, feeling the caffeine tingle spread through her system, invigorating it with much needed life. "You might not have cared enough to be my mother," Raven flinched for a heartbeat, but her shoulders quickly slumped back to their resigned position, "Not like Summer did, but you cared. And I appreciate that."

Tai and Raven stared in awe at their daughter; Yang's expression was hard, but there was a warmth around the edges of her eyes that was infectious. Both parents found themselves smiling, smiles they hadn't anticipated even considering when this conversation began. There was a few, warm heartbeats of silence; it wasn't closure, it wasn't close. But it was a step forward.

"I knew pretty much straight away that I couldn't be your mom,' Raven sighed, taking a conciliatory sip of her own drink, as though seeking forgiveness from the caffeine. She turned to her ex-partner "Tai, you'd geared yourself up to be a father your whole life, you wanted a little girl or two to dote on even before you wanted to be a teacher. And when Yang came into the world, it was always you who woke up at 4am because she was crying, you never complained about anything, you seemed to relish every trial and every tribulation of being a parent…" a single tear formed at the corner of her eye as she spoke, her fingers gripping the mug tighter with every difficult syllable, "And I couldn't, I wanted to be a huntress, I knew how to kill Grimm and that was it, I wanted to be a mom so badly at first," she stared her daughter straight in the eye, "I loved you so much when I first laid eyes on you, but more than that, I was terrified that I would fail you." Raven began to sob, what composure she had remaining to her had been robbed by the words that her little girl's presence had coaxed from her, "I was so stressed by everything, every late night, every early rise. And through it all, your dad just kept smiling, I had no idea what to do, your dad had been born to be a parent, and every passing day that I couldn't stop you crying, every day that I didn't realise you'd crawled too close to the fire, that you were hungry or thirsty, every day that I tore my hair out because I was always missing the cues that your father never failed to see….Every day revealed to me just how unqualified I was to be your mother, how much of a danger to you I was, how much I was failing my little girl…so I ran."

Yang's expression was unreadable, her drink abandoned, her eyes betraying nothing. Behind the mask of her visage, she drank in every word and processed it, she absorbed every expression, measured every tear, sifting through the information with the attention-to-detail of a detective.

"I was so scared of failing you that I ended up failing you worse than anyone." Raven took a steadying breath, her voice hitching in her throat, her tears falling freely. Even Tai, who had been beyond enraged to see her at first, found himself awash with pity, a nagging guilt beginning to eat away at him, a guilt that had been dormant ever since Summer had walked into his life. "But you had your doting dad, and you had Summer – oh god she loved you more than anything, she'd adored Tai from the moment they met, and I'd always been aware, even when I was with your dad, even when we were happy, I was always aware of just how much it was hurting Summer to see us together. Your dad never knew of course, she kept it hidden from him, no matter how much me and my brother could see it."

Yang couldn't help but cast her mind back to those idle days in the Beacon cafeteria, watching Pyrrha gaze at an oblivious Jaune whilst he made passes at Weiss. Was that what it had been like for Qrow and their friends? Watching Summer pine away after the handsome rogue she couldn't have? Tai was staring at his shoes, lost in memory. Guilt washed generously all over his face as he delved through his memories of the woman he'd loved and lost.

"When you were born Yang, Summer went into full doting-aunty mode, she took care of you, sang to you, burped you, made you laugh; she took care of you when I went on missions, she loved you in ways that even I couldn't. She was so much more your mother, even before I left. I knew you were in good hands, that I couldn't be the parent your dad was, that Summer was…."

 _She was 'Supermom', baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters…  
_

"When I heard that Summer and your dad had gotten together, I was happy. I knew that Tai now had someone that could heal the wound I'd left him, and that you had a much better mother than I could ever have been." Raven smiled despite her tears, "They even gave you a little sister."

Yang's mind wandered to Ruby. She remembered seeing her baby sister for the first time at the hospital, tiny, frail, cooing up at her, a tuft of reddish black hair already clinging to her small head. She'd rocked her gently, her dad helping her support little Ruby's weight, the tiny baby burbling and laughing in his sisters arms, helpless, small, perfect. Even though she had been barely two, Yang remembered becoming a big sister as clearly as if it had been yesterday. It occurred to her, strange, sad, but consolingly true, that had Raven not left, Yang would never have had Ruby. Perhaps still a little sister, perhaps a little brother, maybe both. But not Ruby.

In that moment, Yang knew that she could forgive Raven. If nothing else, looking back, she wouldn't have swapped Ruby for anything. She was her baby sister, and she was perfect. Annoying, bratty, over-excitable, and far, far too easily susceptible to bad ideas…but perfect.

"I stayed away for so long, because I was scared that just being in your life would ruin it. Even when Summer was gone, I couldn't come back. I kept tabs, I kept in touch with Qrow on and off again, I knew you were growing up. And I was proud. Proud that my little girl had gotten the loving life I couldn't have given her, proud that she had a baby sister to help her through life. Proud that she still had a father who would never give up on her, and an uncle to make bad jokes and embarrass her dad. She didn't need me, you didn't need me. Right up until Ozpin told me you had set off for Mountain Glenn, right up until that little _monster,"_ she spat the word, "tried to finish you off. In seventeen years, you only needed me once. So in seventeen years, that's the only time I came back."

The silence that followed Raven's outpouring was thickly blanketed. It had fallen like a sudden snowstorm, carpeting the conversation in a shroud. Nothing happened for a moment, then two, then three.

Then Yang Xio-Long rose to her feet, pushing herself up unsteadily from the table with her one remaining arm. In two strides, she had circumnavigated the table, and before either of her parents, be they close or estranged, could react, or even breathe or think, Yang pulled Raven into the hug she had wanted to give her for more than a decade. In that moment, the world stopped turning, the snow stopped falling, time itself rested at the whim of the teenage girl pulling her long-lost mother close with the one arm she had ben mercifully left to hug her with.

"I forgive you."

"Four hundred miles of ocean, and no boat…well, I guess we're swimming!" Nora cheered, throwing her arms to the sky, eliciting a grimace from all present. The makeshift team was stood shivering on a rickety jetty, gazing out at the vast expanse of ocean before them. The three-day hike across Grimm country had been arduous, they'd had to overcome a series of minor wounds from Beowolves and the odd pack of Ursai, they'd braved one element after another as the winter's chill and pounding rain had assaulted them, and Jaune's nightmares had yet to subside, tearing them all from their dreams at an ungodly hour every night without fail. It had been long, it had been painful, but they had finally reached the road's climax; the small, walled fishing village of Wolf Harbour. It was a tiny hamlet, possessed of little more than a market, a small inn, the jetty, and a few dozen rather unimpressed fishermen; it was frontier life in its most distilled form, deep in Grimm country, far from the safety and technology of the kingdoms. It was dingy, it was smelly, but it was their destination, and they had conquered leagues and leagues of beaten track to reach it.

And there was no boat.

"Isn't there anything you can do?" Ren inquired of the Harbourmaster, or rather, the squat, bearded elderly man who managed the jetty, which could at most hold four boats at a time, and somehow smelled less of fish oil than he did.

"I told y'all before," the now rather irate man replied with a huff, "All our boats went out yesterday, they won' be back before th' day af'er tomorrow, cus they gotta go trade their haul at the Southern ports for all the crap we need but don't have up here!" The man let loose a hacking, phlegmy cough that sent them all retreating back a step, "Honestly, you Vale-types forget way too easily how tough crap is up here in the boonies! And besides, we ain't got a fishing ship with half enough gas to make it to Mistral, and we can't spare the dust to power it further; unless you want us to steal the guards' ammunition and get ourselves eaten by Grimm before nightfall!"

Ren held up his hands in a conciliatory manner as the harbourmaster turned on his heel and stalked off, the stench of fish oil lingering in his absence like an unwanted guest that refuses to clean up after themselves. Ruby held her nose fiercely, trying to waft away the fish fumes with her spare hand.

"Eww, Eww, Eww," she whined, her usually high-pitched tone reaching new levels of childlike soprano as she fought back desperately against the smell. "First it was the trees, then the Grimm, now stupid fish-smell? Why does Remnant hate me?" For all that her tone was light however, Ruby could feel the faint hint of fear rising up from within her. Unless they could somehow get across the ocean from here, they would never reach Haven, and the trail of blood left in Cinder Fall's wake would be left to fade away into nothingness. Ruby gritted her teeth; she owed it to the people who had died, to the friends she had lost, to continue this journey somehow. The only other option was to trek through more Grimm country for dozens of miles before they even reached the next village; and the nearest place where they could _guarantee_ getting a serviceable boat or airship to complete the journey, was a large port, two hundred miles to the south.

Or they would have to return to Vale.

 _No,_ Ruby grimaced, whatever their route, it had to start here, there was no more time to be lost, and they lacked the supplies to go so far off course. They had re-aquired a scroll signal, but they couldn't exactly contact Vale for an airship; that would mean a one-way ticket home. They were as good as stranded out here.

The noise caught Ren's attention first, lilac eyes turning skyward, huntsman's instincts kicking in; Stormflower was deployed and tracking the clouds before anyone could blink. A cry from far away, a predatory screech carried on the wind, heralding a coming doom. Maginhild and Crescent Rose were in their bearers' hands in a heartbeat, ready to launch a blistering hail of grenades and sniper-rounds at whatever threat loomed from the heavens. Jaune's eyes meanwhile tracked the ground, searching for cover, his leadership qualities, honed over the past year, taking over. This edge of the town was sparse; most buildings were a good thirty or forty metres back from the shoreline, and the handful of rickety market stalls wouldn't exactly be Grimm-proof.

His eyes caught her spectral form standing at the edge of the seafront; at the very edge of the closest row of buildings. She stood upright, smiling, emerald orbs glinting despite the minimal sunlight. For several long moments, Jaune stood captivated by her beauty, drinking in the very sight of her, her scarlet locks catching the sea breeze. Then he noticed it.

The spectral image of Pyrrha was standing in a fountain; not large by any means, it was a single marble obelisk surrounded by a waist-high marble wall, filled by a single spout cresting from the tip of a sculpted seraphim's bow. It wasn't much in the way of cover, and they would have to charge over fifty metres to get to it, but the hard marble would give them some protection, and with the obelisk to their backs, whatever attacked from above could not strike from behind to carry them off. It wasn't much, but it was the best they had.

 _I'm going mad,_ thought Jaune, a wry smile ghosting over his lips as the image of Pyrrha disappeared with a wave, melting into the breeze, _but right now, madness might just save our lives._

" _Go Jaune, your team needs their leader."_ Her voice spoke to him softly from the back of his mind, encouraging him onwards, her tone lit a fire in his muscles, a warm glow that invigorated him, launched him into reality, heart hammering in his throat, his mind honed like the steel of his weapon. He had no need of sleep to cure his fatigue. He still had her for that.

 _I love you._

" _I know. No go!"  
_

"Guys, form up, head for the fountain and pick a firing line, this is about to go downhill real fast! Are we ready?" Jaune cried, hefting Crocea Mors aloft, it was the most syllables he had strung together in a week, but now he had a reason to use his voice again, there was no grief to let loose now; she had shown him the way they would get through this, just as she always had. Through him, in this moment, Pyrrha lived. It was time to show her how he'd grown.

"Let's do this!" Cried Nora, hefting her grenade launcher, roaring a battle cry as she charged for the fountain; with cries of their own, Jaune, Ren and Ruby followed suit, launching themselves forward across the small, but oh-so-long expanse as the first Grimm broke through the clouds.

It was death on wings, a giant crow with a leering skull for a face. Thirty feet wide, twenty long, giant wings of ebony ending in razor sharp talons. The reaper had come, but not from hell beneath us. It had come from the heavens.

And there were thirty more in its wake.

It was Ruby who gave voice to the terror that gripped them; shouting at the top of their lungs as the murder swooped down from on high, gaining on them every second; it was a race for the one scrap of cover that could save them. Four against thirty, darkness against light, life against death. Terror consumed them, but the fury of the battle to come pumped the blood in their veins all the harder, and before Ruby had even realised what her voice was doing, the terrified shout became a battle cry.

"NEVERMORE!"

The blast shook Weiss off of her bed, her coffee clattering to the ground; the brown lifeblood of her drink casting a dark, oozing shadow onto the snow-white carpet. The youngest Schnee regained her feet quickly, Myrtenaster snatched up from where it had lain by her bedside, and rushed over to where her sister had fallen. Winter was still on the ground, the vibrations of the blast had been so powerful that her chair had fully collapsed underneath her. Weiss helped her sister rise unsteadily to her feet.

"What was that?" the younger sister asked, eyes panicked, pleading.

"I don't know…" Winter began, dazed still by the sudden interruption of their sisterly moment by the blunt trauma of the nearby explosion. But her eyes sharpened at the next set of noises, her ears pricked, a lifetime of soldiery honing her in on each distant bark, steadily and alarmingly getting closer.

"…but _that_ was gunfire."

 _ **AN: About 4/5ths of the way through writing this chapter, I saw Jen Brown's post on twitter about Pyrrha's fate. Words cannot describe how devastated I am, for a character who was never real in the traditional sense, Pyrrha left a deep impact on my heart. I remain hopeful for future seasons nevertheless, and I will remain a direhard RWBY fan forever. Thank you Jen, for an amazing performance, and as always thank you to Miles, Kerry and the gang for an amazing show, and of course, thank you Monty. I hope to see you all in the fall for another amazing volume. Until then, I will keep plugging away at this fanfic, healing my broken heart.**_

 _ **Post-Upload AN: To those who have wondered why I chose to portray Raven in this seemingly OOC manner, thank you for picking up on that! I admit I may have gone overboard with the dramatic outpouring, (and missed a couple of lines about why Raven left, whoops! –re, edited them in!) but in ways that will become apparent in later chapters, this dialogue was necessary for the plot. We will see some more of the darker, dangerous half of Raven's personality when the time comes, but for now, to set up her plotline with Yang and Tai, something resembling closure needed to be established. It's not perfect, and there's more that mother and daughter have to discover about each other before a bond can be wholly achieved, but it's a start. Besides, I find it hard to imagine that Raven did not love her daughter, or that Yang even in her deepest depths of self-doubt and sorrow, could not forgive someone pouring their heart out.**_

 _ **Next Time: Chapter 4 – Battleground Atlas.**_


	4. Chapter 4 - Battleground Atlas

_**AN: So this is slightly later than I planned, I cranked this out late at night, couldn't get my creative juices flowing too well during the daytime, but I like what I've done nonetheless. As ever, I don't own RWBY, I'm just playing in the sandbox.**_

 _ **Disclaimer: Parts of this chapter get a bit visceral and bloody.**_

Chapter 4 – Battleground Atlas.

She should have known he would lie to her. A honeyed plan to lure her in, keep her too focussed on the terrible prospect that she would have to betray her friends to curb Adam's wrath, to suspect that he would turn the tables. She stood there, hugging the wall of the Schnee family's wine cellar, cursing her very existence. Adam had known who her teammates were, known precisely who to target to break her spirit, and now he got to eradicate the family that had done more harm to the faunus than any other in the last generation, all in one fell, decapitating blow.

It was just so _obvious._

Adam, the Lieutenant, some ten White Fang commandos and Blake were hunched in the bombed-out cellar, listening intently to the gunfire noises echoing their staccato death-rattle off the upstairs walls. The first wave had moved in ahead of them, engaging the Schnee-family's mechs and human guards, the muffled _boom_ of exploding machinery and the occasional wet _squelch_ of spilt vitae giving voice to the White Fang's successes. The audible thump of falling bodies, and the pained screams of survivors, crying out to their friends who could no longer hear them, spoke volumes about the first wave's true purpose though; to thin out the Schnee guards...and die standing. Adam was still as a statue, even his breathing seemed to have stopped. The rebel leader listened silently to the macabre serenade of his men dying upstairs, not an ounce of emotion displayed on his face, no remorse for the faunus he had sent to die thinning out the Atlesian numbers. He just stood there, unmoving, the patient hunter, the prowling beast caged within for a moment. Wilt and Blush hung loosely in his grip, their thirst for blood subsided for now. Adam Taurus stood there and listened to his men die, and that terrified Blake more than anything.

'Now.' The order was cold, neutral, emotionless. Not an ounce of anger, pride, rage. Nothing. Just the cold calculus of battle. The enemy's numbers had been thinned, the gunfire upstairs was starting to recede, the time to strike was now. Nothing more, nothing less.

Blake swallowed hard, tentatively, each step an uphill, reluctant, painful effort, she followed her old mentor upstairs. They emerged into an antechamber, snow-white furniture and ebony bookcases torn apart by small arms fire, the books once displayed around the room torn and shredded; ashen flakes of paper falling in chaotic spirals like the final, frozen, falling petals of autumn. Blake blanched at the devastation; she had lived her whole life around books, they were a part of her, a fundamental doorway into the human soul. To wreak such callous destruction on something so precious sent lances of guilt searing into her heart.

That was before she saw the bodies.

There were three of them strewn about the chamber floor. A White Fang soldier, mask blown off by the same high-calibre round that had liquefied her face underneath it. She lay on her back, legs at an awkward angle, ruined skull lolled to the side, an abandoned marionette on the devil's nursery floor. The body was little beyond five foot tall, with soft, fair hair that had weathered her grisly fate, albeit flecked with tinges of scarlet. She could not have been any older than Blake, in fact, to her mounting horror, Blake realised that the poor girl had probably been even younger. Some little idealist student who wanted the bullies to leave her alone, buoyed up on ideology and convinced that these rebels could give her a true family. Adam had tossed her aside into the meat-grinder in the name of his vision without a second thought.

 _There but for the grace of fate…_

The second body was a soldier too, a middle-aged man in an Atlesian uniform. His burnt jacket, singed hair, and the dark crimson shards that perforated every inch of his jacket told the tale of the grenade that had ended him. The revolver in his limp hand still smoked idly, the calling card of the round that had blasted the brains out of the poor fanus girl...but the grisly chunk torn out of his left shoulder told Blake that the she had shot first. The third was an old, greying man in a servant's uniform, slumped awkwardly against the wall behind an upturned table, still bleeding crimson rivers from innumerable holes in his chest. The charcoaled oak of the coffee table had been peppered through with machine-gun rounds; the Butler had dived for cover at the White Fang's approach, only for his shelter to betray him and become his tombstone. So much wanton death, so much pointless sacrifice…and this was just one room.

Blake could feel the bile rising in her throat, she choked back tears, her teeth ramming down hard on her tongue to pre-emptively force a scream back down her throat. She had re-joined the White Fang to try and rob Adam of his need to target her loved ones, now she stood in the ruins of her teammate's home, amid the ruined bodies of her family's aides; Weiss would never forgive her, she could never forgive herself. All this death, all this destruction…it was all on her.

"Blake," Adam spoke, catching her stunned, shell-shocked attention, "You and the Lieutenant sweep the upstairs bedrooms and meet up with squad B." The White Fang leader turned on his heel and made for the doorway, blade drawn, his manic grin starting to paint its way across his features.

"I'm going to go cut the head off the snake."

"Get down!" Weiss barely had time to acknowledge her sister's outcry before she was hurled sideways; Winter's diving form knocking her prone through an archway with barely a heartbeat to spare before the space Weiss had been occupying exploded. The primal, scorching fury of the grenade blast finished off what Winter's momentum had started, careening them through the archway and into a drawing room, splinters of oak and steel ricocheting around at every lethal angle, mercifully missing the sisters by a hair's breadth.

Weiss' head was pounding with the ear-shattering aftershock of the blast, but she didn't have a second to spare as Winter was already pulling her to her feet not a moment after they'd landed. An earlier struggle in the room, which had left the bodies of two maids and an Atlesian guard sprawled around the floor at odd angles, had also turned over the room's billiard table; it was behind this merciful piece of furniture refuge that the sisters dived behind, just as four White Fang commandos burst into the room; assault rifles and submachine guns lancing great chunks out of chairs, lamps, corpses but thankfully not the resilient wood of the table. The noise was deafening, cacophonous, and weighed down Weiss' very soul with terror, as though her aura itself was made of lead.

"Four of them, two of us…I guess I've been in worse." Winter's humour was dry, gallows-esque and her chuckle never made it close to her eyes.

"That was against Grimm, who last time I checked, didn't have _machine guns_." Weiss cold laughter was almost petulant, flashing unwelcome images behind her eyes of the uptight, elitist, racistlittle brat she had been when she first stepped off the Beacon airship. She forcibly thrust the images away with a shake of the head; now was not the time to look back and cringe, to waste even half a second on old memories now would mean her very last memory would be bleeding out on the floor of a shot-up drawing room. Weiss steeled herself, gripping the pommel of Myrtenaster with bruised, bleeding knuckles. She was a Schnee, she would not go down without a fight; and she certainly would not go down here, in some gambler's hole in her childhood home. Her fate, when it came, would _mean_ something, even if she never saw this struggle through to the end, even if some horror laid her low; returning to the dust as Pyrrha had, she wanted her sacrifice to galvanise, to inspire, to help one way or another.

She was Weiss Schnee, and she was not going to die here. 

With a war-cry that she never thought her lungs could muster; Weiss broke cover; vaulting over the billiard table before her panicked sister could stop her. Her glyphs manifested forth even as she flung herself through the air; an icy shield against harm, bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the armour her soul had cast around her.

The first commando died before she could even fully register she was under attack; Myrtenaster puncturing her skull from just under the jaw; the tip, sheathed in crimson, shattering the top of her cranium in a spray of viscera. Weiss was onto the second would-be-assassin before her foes had even been able to train their weapons on her; her blade carving out her enemy's throat before he could blink; the faunus warrior collapsed, desperately grasping his throat as his lifeblood fountained forth from his ruined gullet, vainly trying to hold his life in with both hands.

The third killer died much quicker and cleaner than the last; a shard of ice, needle-sharp, blasted through the eye-socket of his mask and clean out the back of his head; spray-painting a tiny patch of bookshelf with condensed brain-matter as the warrior collapsed in a lazy sprawl. It was Winter who had claimed the tally this time, her semblance glyphs dancing before her as she engaged the final commando. This one, a young woman sporting a long, jagged combat knife, was obviously the squad leader; she charged Winter with zealous fury, blade arcing overhead, rifle abandoned so she could put both hands behind the blow; the faunus screeched a war cry that set Winter's teeth on edge…

…It died in her throat as Myrtenaster pierced her heart from behind. She followed it a heartbeat later.

The Sisters stood amongst the carnage, surveying the results of their bid for survival. The battle had lasted eight seconds from the time Weiss had jumped the table, one kill for every two heartbeats. _One kill._ It took her another few seconds to wrap her head around it, for the weight of her actions to sink in…but realisation soon hit her like a thunderbolt. Weiss' mind blasted into overdrive as her brain replayed the last few seconds at hyper-speed, her heart hammered, her brain ached. She'd killed them…she'd cut them down…her sword clattered from her grip, her fingers failing her as the shock set in; her whole body shivering despite the heat. This wasn't like her last battles; not culling soulless Grimm or even killing White Fang soldiers with dust; the wounds cauterising as soon as they were caused. This had been her blade alone, her bare hands alone; bloody, brutal, visceral, _wrong._ She stumbled, her legs failing her, tossing her clumsily into Winter's outstretched arms. She felt physically sick, and she surrendered fully to the tears. She was supposed to be a Huntress, not a thug; battle had never been this…this _evil_ before.

"The first time I had to kill a man, I threw up all over a superior officer's boots." Winter stroked her sister's hair, her voice calm and collected, wholly at odds with her erratic post-adrenaline heartbeat, thudding like a jackhammer inside her ribcage. She had been 'Winter the Soldier' and 'Winter the Sister' today, now, in this moment, the eye of the storm, she was both. "I was sick for a day and couldn't sleep for a week." Weiss listened intently to her sister's words, latching onto them like a life-raft in a sea of guilt and consuming grief. "The trick is to focus on what all this death _means,_ what the purpose was behind it all, and if that purpose was worth it."

"Was it?" the question squeaked forth from her amidst the wracking sobs, slowly subsiding but still jettisoning tears freely.

"I don't know," Winter replied, holding her sister's shoulders and staring her in the eye, "But we're going to find out." She extended a hand to her younger sibling, proffering her discarded weapon. Taking what comfort she could from her sister's words, Weiss took up her rapier, wiping away the tears from her bloodshot eyes with her off-hand. She wavered unsteadily on her feet, but forced herself to find her balance. Now was not the time, she had let the shock and grief take her for too long here, and every second lost bought their attackers more time to regroup. Nodding once to her sister, and hoping against hope that she would not have to kill anyone else today, Weiss hurried back out the archway, head down; eyes narrowed, determination steeling her gaze.

The bullet took her in the shoulder before she'd even gone three paces; the pistol-round shattering her collarbone and sending her clattering to the ground, an undulating scream tearing its way out of her throat. The pain was like nothing she'd ever felt, even as her aura fought desperately to heal the damage, re-knitting muscle milliseconds after the impact, the pain alone kept her on the floor. She tried to pull herself into a crouch, but couldn't. Her ears were ringing, her vision was hazy; she could make out Winter kneeling next to her, crying out her name, trying to shield her from another volley with her own form, but it was the sight over her sister's shoulder that sent chills up her spine.

There were two figures standing at the end of the corridor; the first, a heavyset man in White Fang uniform, sporting a snarling full-face mask; in his hands he carried the largest chainsaw Weiss had ever seen, snarling metallic teeth hungry for blood. It took her a moment to recognise him as the rebel lieutenant she'd fought on the train so long ago, back to finish what he'd started in the Mountain Glenn tunnels. But that was not what made her blood run cold. Standing to the lieutenant's left, was another figure hefting a smoking weapon; the same pistol-blade that had just gunned her down, amber eyes glistening with tears, hands trembling even as she gripped her sword; guilt and pain made manifest in her every expression.

"Blake?"

"They're coming around for another pass!" Jaune called out, his authoritarian voice flecked with edges of panic, pointing Crocea Mors to the heavens to direct his team's fire. Crescent Rose answered his call, a single perfect sniper shot rocketing skywards, bisecting a diving Nevermore from skull to tail.

"Awwh Yeah!" Ruby called, punching the air in jubilation, "Nailed it!" but her celebration was cut short as three more of the murderous flock of Grimm scythed downwards, dive-bombing the fountain, talons glinting in the sunlight with an evil glare. The first was driven off by a burst of purple fire, small-calibre dust rounds pelting its side; causing more annoyance than harm, but Ren's volley forced it into retreat nonetheless. The second swooped low over the fountain, talons missing Nora by a hands-span as the Valkyrie hit the deck, firing Maginhild prone into its exposed belly. The warrior cackled like a demon as the beast exploded, showing disintegrating black feathers all across the surrounding area. The third Grimm slammed into the fountain with the force of a hurricane, snapping the top, seraphim and all, off of the central obelisk and coming within inches of decapitating Jaune and Ren, before it hurtled skywards once more, chased away by sporadic bursts from Stormflower and Crescent Rose.

Jaune cast his eyes about him, analysing, calculating; they had killed six of the Grimm so far, for only minor injuries in return, but their cover was fast failing them. The fountain had allowed them to pick firing lanes and bring multiple weapons to bear on one target without being ambushed from behind, but multiple bodily impacts had all but shattered the stonework around them. They were thigh-deep in dirty, bloodied water, without shelter and their ammunition was starting to run dry. The tide was turning, and not in their favour.

"We need a new plan!" He called out, open to ideas. He turned to his comrades, taking in their haggard expressions; even Nora, maintaining her usual vibrant humour throughout, was visibly flagging. Ruby caught his eye and nodded, her brain putting her own accumulated leadership skills to good use as she sought out a new angle, firing constantly even as she desperately sought an answer, buying herself time to think with every round she blasted up at the circling predators overhead.

It was no use; there was no way out. The nearby houses had been torn apart in the first dives, they had nothing to offer in the way of cover, and behind them there was only fifty metres of open terrain, where they would be picked off one by one with ease. To leave the fountain was to invite a messy death, to remain was, at this point, simply to delay one.

As if her own internalisation of hopelessness was the que for their doom to approach, no less than ten of the giant, monstrous birds dived; hurtling downwards with an eerie grace, launching volleys of razor-sharp feathers as they went. The Hunters hurled themselves up against what little remained of the crumbling walls and obelisk as death rained around them in a whistling volley of unbound doom, the angle of the stonework mercifully saving them. They turned their weapons on the swooping flock, but as though futility itself powered their tools, the combined fire of Crescent Rose, Maginhild and Stormflower had almost no effect; a single Nevermore dropped like a stone from the heavens, flattening a building as it crashed to earth with an ear-splitting howl; the others just kept on coming.

Terror gripped Ruby like a glove, every round that missed, every desperate bullet that just nicked or grazed her targets constricting the noose of fear about her. She was staring death in the face and she knew it; forty metres, thirty, twenty-five. She was facing mortality just as surely as she had the night she'd seen Cinder Fall put an arrow through Pyrrha's heart. She would die here, her mission failed, her sacrifice worthless, knee-deep in a fountain in the middle of nowhere, picked apart by soulless carrion like a scrap of meat thrown to a pack of wild dogs.

 _Twenty metres, fifteen, ten…_

Crescent Rose dropped from her numb fingers. She saw the encroaching Grimm as though from a great distance, her vision narrowed, elongated, a burning sensation erupted behind her eyelids as the Nevermores bore down on her. The closer the creatures came, the further away they seemed to be, until Ruby was looking at them as though through a telescope backwards.

Time slowed to a crawl. Each heartbeat took a lifetime to sound in her chest. Each breath took an age, each blink took an eon. She wasn't aware of her arm moving until she saw it there in front of her, hand-splayed, palm thrust forwards at the onrushing Grimm. The burning sensation behind her eyes built to boiling point, until her very brain felt like it was on fire.

 _Five metres, four, three, two…one…_

She felt as though a volcano had erupted within her; a primal roar ripping itself from her lungs in the process, an inhuman cry of pain and desperation resonating within her very soul. And just as soon as the fire within her came, so too did it leave; blasted forth from her mind so fiercely that it consumed itself, burning out within her until not even the candlewick remained. Blackness rushed in, swallowing her whole, teasing her out from the folds of reality.

She felt herself hit something soft but firm, gentle fabrics cradling her head, somehow soothing her hazy mind: _Ren._ A man's voice, etched with concern, at the edge of her hearing, and a pair of violet eyes – so close, yet so so far away, confirmed her suspicions… _suspicions? What a funny word? Sus..pish..uns…_ She tried to shake her head in a bid to clear her wandering thoughts, but to no avail; why was Ren worried about her, what about the Nevermore? _Never…More…Never…More…_ The voice was calling her name from afar, trying to lull her away from the blackness, but it had already taken her; her sight shifting to total darkness, the faraway noise becoming more and more distant, more and more muffled by the black…

…and then, just once, for one elusive word, it came closer again, as though the speaker had ghosted through the walls of her mind. The voice was musical, soft, warm, loving, and definitely not Ren's…this was a woman's voice; familiar and yet not, like a long forgotten dream, a happy memory long buried, replaying it's sweet music in the recesses of her mind. _Ruby…_

For half a heartbeat, she saw something in the dark; faint, distant, there-and-gone again, but unmistakable. Two bright pinpricks in the dark. In the heart of the blackness, for the briefest of flashes, two silver eyes gazed back at her.

And then they were gone.

The force of the door exploding off its hinges sent Ironwood sprawling; the general reeled from the blast like a wounded animal reels from the deathblow, one hand uneasily going for his gun as he attempted to pull himself to his feet. To his left, out of the vaguest corner of his eye, he saw Franz staggering to his feet, one hand on the hardwood desk. The head of the Schnee family looked paler than James had ever seen him, scrabbling around in his desk drawers, desperately searching for the handgun he kept stowed there. It had been fairly ordinary meeting until a few minutes prior; discussing the latest designs for Atlesian infantry mechs. _Fairly_ ordinary in that where the topics of conversation were nothing knew, on a deep level, _Franz_ certainly was. He had seemed distant, far from his usual business-like self, something had enraptured his attention even before the fighting broke out. It had wounded the SDC patriarch on a very deep level; you could see it in the dimmed tone of his eyes, in the creases of his brow, in the ever-so-slight slump in his posture that had never been there before. Franz Schnee looked like he was having to try exceedingly hard not just to look normal, but to _care_ enough to do so.

That something could ruffle his feathers on such a noticeable scale had been all the notice James had needed that the world was turning upside down. A lesson reinforced by the punctuating cracks of gunfire a handful of minutes later.

The ringing in his ears persisted, a low whine that robbed him of his senses; he finally staggered the whole way to his feet, bringing his pistol up to cover the smoke wreathed doorway, when a monstrous uppercut sent him crashing back down again; the air brutally battered out of his lungs, his revolver spinning away harmlessly to clatter against the back wall. Coughing, winded and spluttering, James Ironwood stared up at his assailant, finding the tip of a fearsome crimson blade mere inches from his face.

"Gentlemen," began Adam, a manic, devil-possessed chuckle underscoring each syllable, "I would stay down if I were you."

 _ **AN: And there we go, don't you all love cliffhangers? Many thanks to all the wonderful followers, favourite-ers and reviewers to have graced this story so far, you're all amazing! Thank you for joining me on this journey! I'm sorry to say that there probably won't be an update tomorrow as I'm going to be very busy, but I'll get what I can done so I can get chapter 5 to you promptly on Thursday! Until then!**_

 _ **Next Time: Chapter 5 – Sins of the Fathers.**_


	5. Chapter 5 - Sins of the Fathers

_**AN: Sorry this took so long guys! I've had a hectic week, but I've finally been able to sit down and write at this ungodly hour! Much love to all the fans of RWBY and to everyone who's been keeping up with this fic, you guys are the best!**_

 _ **Disclaimer: I still don't own RWBY.**_

Chapter 5: Sins of the Fathers.

Weiss gripped her ruined shoulder with hands she could barely feel. It wasn't the pain that kept her down now; her aura had done it's work, taking the edge off the impact – though she would still need to see a Doctor. What kept her rooted to the spot, rigid, unmoving, still as death, was pure shock.

Blake had shot her.

Blake had _shot her._

 _Blake…_

The girl in question held Gambol Shroud in a shuddering grip, fingers bleeding, nails broken. The agony in her gaze hit Weiss with the force of a thunderclap. Blake Belladonna looked to be about a minute away from drowning on her own tears; the girl Weiss had known, the staunch warrior who held everything behind a veil and an upturned book to protect herself and those around her, had been slain the day the White Fang cut down Yang in the Beacon cafeteria. The girl that stood in her place now, shivering with revulsion, eyes awash with agonised tears, had been emotionally broken in ways Weiss couldn't even begin to describe.

With widened eyes, Weiss realised in that horrible moment that Blake hadn't shot her; the White Fang had shot her, _through_ Blake. This was not the girl she had known, this was a pained puppet, reluctantly dancing to the tune played by a madman.

"Leave her alone!" Winter's cry was tinged with rage, swords drawn, fighting-stance low; ready to pounce like a leopard, whilst covering Weiss' prone form with as much of her own body as she could. Weiss tried to haul herself up, using Myrtenaster as a crutch, but one look from Winter convinced her to stay down; her sister's gaze was pleading, _terrified –_ a look that in all her seventeen years, Weiss had never seen her elder sibling display even once. _Stay down,_ the look begged, _stay down and don't get hurt._

 _Stay down and leave this to me._

She'd barely processed Winter's unsaid words when the Atlesian commander pounced; blades whirling, glyphs launching her forward like round-shot from a cannon; Winter hit the Lieutenant like a Typhoon hits the shore; with all the raw savagery of nature unbound. The rebel, to his credit, was no slouch; that much Weiss could remember; he hefted his motorized blade around to parry Winter's strikes with a fluidity and primal strength that it should not have been possible to achieve with a weapon so heavy. He parried high, low, high again; Winter's flurry of strikes finding no purchase behind the snarling, roaring defence of the chain-blade, but likewise each of the Lieutenant's own savage blows was turned aside with effortless, deadly grace; parry, riposte, guard, parry again.

Blake had visibly backed away from the fighting, circling the duo, Gambol Shroud drawn; unable to find an opening to assist amid the twisting, whirling chaos of the duel. It was like watching Gods trade blows; a lethal dance of fluid bladework and unchecked savagery. The girl in black continued to circle the pair, watching, waiting; blearly eyes suddenly focussed, seeking an opening to end the fight.

Weiss scrambled to her feet, raw, emotional hurt dragging her upright; finding her feet amongst the grief. She staggered forward, rapier drawn, each step unsteady, but focussed. Winter was the greatest duellist she had ever witnessed, but at close-quarters, two against one would overcome even her; especially when a fighter as fast and powerful as Blake found a weak-spot to launch herself into the fray from.

She had to stop her.

She steeled herself, nothing could have prepared her to draw swords against someone she held so dear, but she had to; she took whatever courage she could get from within, no matter how thin, no matter how false. _Save Winter._ Was her only thought, her only directive. In that moment, _Save Winter_ was all that remained of Weiss.

The elder Schnee parried an overhead strike that could have levelled a building, roaring, biting chainsaw teeth gridning against her cutlasses, sparks flying like macabre fireworks. The force of the blow staggered her, forcing her back a step…

One step was all Blake needed.

Weiss sprinted across the hallway as fast as her legs could carry her; panicked eyes saw Gambol Shroud raised high – Blake's eyes locked onto Winter's exposed neck as her target continued to stagger under the sheer force of the Lieutenant's strikes.

Time slowed to a crawl; Weiss launched herself forward, Myrtenaster poised in what she could already tell was a vain attempt to intercept the strike; Winter had not seen the blow that would surely kill her, too focussed was she in holding off her other foe's brutal onslaught. Gambol Shroud fell with deadly precision; the raw finality of death encapsulated in every centimetre Blake moved…

…Except, as Weiss realised suddenly, not the movement that dragged Blake's eyes just, barely perceptibly, to the left…

..Where Winter had been standing until half a heartbeat ago…

…Where her _real_ target had just occupied…

The Lieutenant hefted his monstrous weapon high, the revving of the blade its own cacophonous battle cry, winding up for the deathblow that would never land.

Gambol Shroud parted his head from his shoulders in a single swing.

-o-o-o-o-o-

'Ruby! Ruby! Ruby!' Nora was desperately shaking the younger girl, who had slumped into a seemingly never ending slumber. Nora cradled her adoptive teammate close to her, concern painted across her face as she hunched up against the crumbling remains of the fountain wall. Jaune had borrowed Magnhild for a moment, firing grenades skywards in her absence along with Ren, fighting to cover their teammates. Their targets were the remaining score of Nevermore that continued to circle overhead, still plenty enough to massacre the four of them where they stood; especially since the youngest of their number was somehow out of the fight.

But what an exit she'd had.

The blast of silver that had resonated out from the little girl a few minutes prior had been, in a word, breathtaking. A wave of beautiful, shimmering silver flame had shot forth from Ruby's eyes with the force of a tidal wave; crashing into the Grimm like a diamond firestorm. The diving Nevermore had been frozen where they stood; hanging in the air, shunted out of the stream of time itself by whatever force had erupted within Ruby. Magnhild and Stormflower had reaped a brutal close-quarters tally on the helpless Grimm; the perfect predators turned into easy prey inside of a heartbeat. 

But there were still fourteen Nevermore up there, circling, waiting, weaving in and out of the blaring flakk from the fountain. Fourteen Nevermore paitently awaiting the moment when their prey ran out of ammunition.

 _Click_

It was the softest sound, creeping tenderly yet ominously from Magnhild's barrel. Yet it carried with it a chill that all but stopped Nora's heart. As though the very thought of it had tempted fate just that bit too much, her beloved weapon had spat it's last volley. A series of similar, defeated wisps of noise from the chambers of Stormflower heralded a kindred doom. Their ammo had run dry.

For a moment, an elusive, yet still painfully present moment, as Nora's breath refused to catch, as the chill set into her bones, as her brain came to the breakneck realisation that she would die, knee-deep in soiled water, in some forgotten fountain in the middle of nowhere, the breeze heralded another sound.

It began as a burbling, thrumming, juddering noise that chattered the teeth and scrunched up the eyes. It grew quickly, a roaring, pulsating crescendo at the corners of Nora's ears; she dared to take her eyes off the Nevermore, as though destiny itself dragged her gaze away.

In the distance, several hundred meters out into the bay, but gaining fast; a black dot crested the horizon. A black dot that turned into a large, white, wedge-shaped thing that grew larger and larger in her eyes with the roar of its engines and the thudding of Nora's reawakened heart.

It was a speedboat; a white speedboat, ten metres wide at it's largest, with a proud, slicing prow that scythed through the waves like Crescent Rose through a Beowolf's neck.

 _No,_ Nora suddenly realised, as the boat drew close enough that her eyes picked up the double-crescent device resplendent on the vehicle's hull, _not like Crescent Rose…_

… _like Crocea Mors!_

Atop the boat, at the very apex of its prow, arms splayed wide to catch the wind, was a tall blonde girl that Nora did not recognise, but judging by the look in Jaune's eyes, he clearly did. The newcomer was flanked on either side however, by two other women that Nora _very_ much knew, and whose presence could not have come at a better moment.

Nora had believed that Team CFVY had set the bar for dramatic, lifesaving entrances at the eleventh hour long-since, with their resoundingly powerful airdrop into Vale's main square all those long months ago. She had no idea just how much higher the bar was about to be raised; and by the defending champions no less. The mysterious blonde girl was flanked on her left by a runway warrior in several unmistakable shades of chocolate, and on her right by the tall, willowy form of her partner; the former sporting her trademark minigun, the latter it's spectral clone, both audibly spooled up and ready to wreak havoc. But this alone was not what Nora would later remember as the most awe inspiring thing she had ever witnessed.

When they had arrived yesterday evening to Wolf Harbour, local scuttlebutt had taught Nora of a tradition amongst the local boys, something of a passage into manhood without which no self-respecting Harbour boy could apparently hope to impress a girl; the usual flavour of testosterone-fuelled stupidity. A little ways out into the bay, stood a large rock some thirty metres high, known to the locals as _Ursas' Tooth_ ; sheer, rugged and impressive on one side, but bevelled on the other so as to form a gentle, flat incline to the apex. On his sixteenth birthday, so the tradition went, each boy had to run all thirty wet, slippery metres in a single explosive sprint and swan-dive off of the other side into the depths below. The cause of decades of embarrassing slips, broken ankles, sprained wrists and outright lies about success amongst the youths of Wolf Harbour, was about to become the agent of their salvation.

With an almighty roar, the Arc speedboat blasted its way up _Ursas' Tooth,_ miles and miles' worth of pent-up, breakneck momentum rocketing it up the incline and launching it skyward from the rocky apex. The boat soared high into the air like a dust missile; scything amongst the Nevermore inside of a second, flattening several of the soulless predators against the crushing prow. What the boat itself did not reap of their prey, Coco and Velvet were more than happy to sow destruction unto. Coco's minigun and Velvet's clone weapon blasted a volley of pure, dust-laden death into the remaining Grimm, culling them all in a single broadside; ebony feathers raining down to earth like the final, beautiful notes of a macabre concerto.

Nora had no words for what she had just witnessed. She didn't think she ever would. All that came to mind to describe the poetic brilliance of Team CFVY's entrance, as the boat crashed back to earth, skidding up the Town's main thoroughfare; with Coco, not even holding onto the railings, removing her trademark sunglasses and waving them aloft in salute.

'That…' Nora mouthed, 'was awesome.'

o-o-o-o

They sprinted through the winding halls of the Schnee mansion like the hounds of hell barked at their heels. They ducked around corners, gunfire chipping off gouts of paintwork and priceless marble as their pursuers sought to run them down, always eluded, always denied their chance at vengeance by a hairs' breadth.

Blake couldn't read Weiss' expression, it was locked somewhere between shock, relief and pure dread as they fled through her ruined home. Her aura had healed the wound that Blake had been forced to deliver, or at least it had done as much as it could to reknit the muscle – the bullet was still in there and still aching, that much she could tell from the grimace that teased the corners of Weiss' mouth. Guilt speared through Blake even now; she'd had to do it, she'd hated herself for pulling that trigger, but she needed the Lieutenant to believe her deception long enough to take his mind off her. From the moment she'd realised exactly where she was, instead of where Adam had created an entire convoluted attack plan to trick her into thinking she was going, she had been looking for a way out. She'd run back to the White Fang to buy her friends' lives with her own servitude. Now she knew that no price she could pay was worth more than her suffering in the eyes of the monster that had once been her partner.

She had hoped that she could sell her life on some far off battlefield under the White Fang's banner, and thus purchase a long and safe existence for Weiss, for Ruby…

…for Yang…

 _She fell, gracefully in defeat, beautiful in tragedy. She fell, one arm sprinkling molten flakes of aura into the breeze as her soul struggled to cope with the shock of the injury. Even then, she was still fluid, still precise, still poetic in her every movement as she crashed to earth. She was the most beautiful creature Blake had ever witnessed, realized now in agonizing glory as though the sudden, gut wrenching pain in Blake's heart had painted itself onto the canvas of a master artist. The girl that had fought back to back with her in the Emerald Forest, the gentle soul who had coaxed her from her self-destructive soliloquy with the intense fire of passion and the caressing warmth of empathy. The girl who'd taken her first dance, and though Sun had had the honour of making her laugh all evening, had still been the first to bring her to life on the floor. The one who had been there for her even when Sun couldn't relate, couldn't understand, couldn't know her pain. The girl she had grown to love clattered to the ground with the finality of destiny itself._

' _I will destroy everything you love, starting with her.'_

She had been wrong, she saw that now. And as she had brought Gambol Shroud down on the Lieutenant's exposed neck, as she had forever severed herself from her past, never to return no matter how painful the future may be, she had sworn one all-important vow.

Adam Taurus would take her loved ones over her dead body, and not a second sooner. 

They burst through the doors of the main foyer, catching the assembled White Fang by surprise. It was Winter who reacted first, charging ahead of her compatriots, blade whipping through the necks of the first two Faunus guards before they had even realised she was there. Blake leapt through the air as the first barks of gunfire roared back at them, spiralling over the blazing bullets, Gambol Shroud answering them with a single gunshot as she flipped through space, the round felling three more commandos, their heads exploding in turn like grisly fireworks. Myrtenaster continued it's grim tally as Weiss dived into the fray, rolling under the staccato gunshots to hamstring and gut their fanatical foes left, right and centre. The room was chaos, White Fang soldiers scrambling in vain to defend themselves against the sudden onslaught of the traitor in their midst and the Schnee sisters. Screams were cut short by the graceful strikes of Weiss and Winter, severing jugulars and punching through eye sockets, whilst each solitary, _crack_ of Gambol Shroud's hand-cannon blew out another skull, punctured another lung, and rent through another heart.

Blake was by no means numb to the pain she was creating. She felt for the poor fools that Adam had roped along in his fanatical madness, with each life she took, she prayed to Gods she had long since stopped believing in that they found peace in the next life. A peace this world had denied them so much they had sought out Adam to cure it, only for him to fan the flames of the firestorm. Blood that wasn't hers stung her face, viscera slicked the marble floor, the scent of death hung in the air, but Blake kept killing. Cursing Adam's name with every gunshot, every sword thrust and every deadly swing, holding back her tears behind a veil of pained fury, Blake fought on.

The last commando fell with Myrtenaster puncturing his windpipe, gurgling and choking on his final breath for one last agonized moment, before collapsing. To their credit, none of the rebels had dared to beg for mercy, none had tried to run. They had died on their feet.

 _Like Huntsmen…_ the thought came to Blake faster than she could guard against the emotive blow that came with it. She sagged to her knees amidst the corpses, her breath teasing it's way out of her in a defeated sigh. The tears would not fall, they did not need to. The sheer pointlessness of all the death she was surrounded by had ensconced her soul in ways crying could never do justice to.

Crying couldn't. But a bullet in Adam's heart just might.

'Blake?' she had been so withdrawn in that moment that she didn't recognise Weiss' face, hovering a few inches before her own, until the other girl spoke, 'are you alright?'

'No,' the answer was easy enough, but as amber eyes met the grey, she found a measure of strength nonetheless. There was an understanding in Weiss' gaze, it was not full acceptance, but nor was it accusation. She remembered the look in the heiress' eyes when Weiss had challenged her, atop a wobbling stool, to confess her problems before they began investigating Torchwick. The grey gaze locked onto hers now was less intense, but carried the same message; _I know you have something important to tell me, and I trust you to tell the truth._ Weiss knew that Blake could explain her actions, and more importantly, she did not doubt her friend's intentions now. She hadn't lost Weiss, but confessions would still need to be made, once they were safe. _If_ they were ever safe again.

'No, but I will be.'

'Is that so?' The mocking voice startled Blake to her feet, eyes cast upwards at the source. Blake, Weiss and Winter backed up to each other, eyes in all directions as White Fang soldiers flooded the upstairs balcony. There were more of them than even Blake had realised were part of the assault; rifles and submachine guns trained on the huntresses that had unwittingly stepped into their kill box. Adam had baited them a trap with the lives of his own men; faunus blood had thinned the Schnee defences, and faunus blood had now been the lure that turned predator into prey. Sixty gun barrels stared them down. No escape, No means to fight, Nowhere to run.

As she stared up into the eyes of her tormentor, insane grin plastered across his face, she realised with a painful, yet inevitable finality, that Adam had known she would turn on him all along.

He had been looking forward to it.

Over Adam's shoulder was slung the battered, broken, but unmistakable body of an unconscious James Ironwood. To his left, Wilt held menacingly at his throat, stood a thin, greying, moustachioed man that Blake realized instantly could only be Weiss' father. Franz Schnee, to his credit, was doing his utmost to look undaunted in the face of the beast holding him captive, but the fight was visibly leaving his eyes as he beheld his daughters at gunpoint. Blake had never seen the Schnee patriarch in person before, though she remembered his visage from White Fang propaganda posters in her youth, almost always distorted to resemble some Grimm in human clothing. As Blake beheld the White Fang's worst enemy, the man around whom the bad reputation of the Schnee Dust Company revolved, the supposed monster who used faunus as slave labour and profited from their suffering, it shocked her that all she saw was a man who had lost all hope. Franz Schnee was desperately trying to be strong, not, she realized, to uphold the SDC, or his name, or even to intimidate the White Fang, but for the sake of his girls.

Franz Schnee was trying to be a father, here at the end of all things.

Despite every belief she ever had growing up, even after meeting and eventually gaining the trust and true friendship of Weiss, Blake Belladona stared into her enemy's eyes…and she didn't hate him.

'Drop your weapons.' Adam's tone held no room for negotiation.

With a single, sidelong look to her compatriot in white, a single silent exchange between the amber and the grey; Gambol Shroud and Myrtenaster hit the floor.

o-o-o-o

Night was falling by the time Weiss awoke, and her awakening was not a merciful one. The sudden torrent of cold water slammed into her frame with the jarring force of a thunderclap, biting deep into her bones with its wet, icy teeth. She shook her silver, sodden hair, the shuddering motion revitalising her somewhat, bringing her back into reality.

She wished she hadn't.

She was tied to a pole, held upright by iron shackles forcing her hands above her head. To her left and right, she saw Blake and Winter, similarly bound, similarly soaked, eyes forward and defiant in the faces of their captors. It was a futile display of what little might remained to them, yet she steeled herself to follow suit. Her defiance died in her heart though when she saw the veritable sea of rifle barrels levelled at them.

At least a hundred White Fang soldiers held them at gunpoint, weapons trained. A firing squad simply had not sufficed, the White Fang needed a display of real power to end their captives. From amongst the serried white ranks and snarling masks, a figure in black picked his way forward; scarlet hair catching the breeze, matching the colour of the blade held lazily in his grip. Weiss knew him only as the leader of their captors, but the terrified look in Blake's eyes revealed to her in a moment that this had been Blake's old partner, her mentor gone rogue, whose memory still haunted her friend even now.

'Finally awake I see,' he spoke with a seductive purr, as though distilling raw, physical pleasure from their soon-to-be deaths, 'sorry about that.' Weiss gritted her teeth again, trying to draw on her last reserves of bravery, eyes darting about for an escape route, but finding nothing.

Adam continued to lazily pick his way forward, his weapon twirling in his palm; enjoying every second of what he was about to do, the pain he was about to cause. With no hope to be found in the recesses of her vision, Weiss tried in vain to stare her enemy down, but that was all but impossible with her foe's eyes hidden behind his leering, ornamented, terrifying mask. Adam Taurus was the White Fang personified; a faceless, terrifying force of nature. Weiss swallowed hard, it was all she could do.

'Bring him out.' The order was simple, but teased out with a caress of Adam's tongue, savouring each syllable. Weiss' eyes tracked left, to the mouth of a nearby tent, where two commandos emerged, dragging a body between them. Whatever fight she had mustered in her vain defiance was brutally kicked out of her by fate as Weiss recognized her father; lips cracked, a black eye bulging on his brow, teeth missing – these monsters had taken their time with their mortal enemy, she realised, and they had relished every moment of it.

The commandos dumped Franz Schnee to the floor before them in an unceremonious heap, before turning and walking back the way they had came in perfect lockstep. His hands were unbound, but it was clear in an instant that the beating he had received had left him without the strength to run, his breathing rattled in his gullet as he fought for air, desperately pushing himself up from the dirt into a kneeling position, facing his daughters.

His gaze met hers.

Weiss had often heard it read that though anyone could communicate silently, a pointed stare carrying a score of words, those who truly loved each other could convey everything they needed without ever saying anything. Anyone could grasp the fundamentals of a look, but it took love to put enlightenment truly behind the gaze, whether that was a partner for their soulmate, or a parent for a child. When Blake and Yang had danced together at the Festival Prom, Weiss had looked on from the sidelines, seeing the tenderness in Yang's gaze meet its tentative, unadmitted but oh so present reflection in Blake's own, confessing pure pride in each other for admitting the struggle of a lifetime on one part, and overcoming a veritable mountain of sorrow and worry on the other. When Beacon had been collapsing around them at the end, the last time she'd seen Pyrrha Nikos alive, she had been locking eyes with Jaune, emerald on sapphire, the pair of them conveying a lifetime of unsaid love in a single look, taking the strength from each other that they needed in those final, desperate hours of the battle.

Now, for a heartbeat, Weiss' eyes locked onto Franz's, and she caught an eternity of guilt flaring out of them. In a single moment, she saw herself growing up from another's eyes – saw the pride her father had taken in her every achievement, yet had never known how to express. She saw a lifetime of difficulty, of stifling arrogance so carefully cultivated by generations of aristocratic elitism that Franz had not been able to escape it even to let his own daughters know how much he cared. She saw how much it had pained him to try and chastise her days before, how he'd stumbled and blundered and tried to protect her from dark forces, not realising how attached and willing to forgive his daughter had grown towards her friends. She saw in that moment that for seventeen years, Franz Schnee had done his utmost to be a good father in the only way he had ever known how, and how much his failure had pained him.

In that moment, he finally succeeded.

'Weiss, I'm so proud…'

When the gunshot rang out, Weiss didn't process it. She didn't fathom it even as her father's body fell to the floor like a dropped marionette, even as Franz Schnee's blood flecked her face in a fine, scarlet mist. She didn't hear her sister's scream of pain and rage, even as it overloaded her ears with anguish. Weiss just stood there and stared at the body, lost in her father's final words.

 _I'm so proud…_

She didn't cry, she didn't scream. She was too far gone for that; she lifted her gaze to the rebel leader, the hilt of his rifle-sheath still smoking, blade still twirling in his hand, evil smile still playing about his lips. She drank in her enemy's bloodthirsty, ecstatic, almost drunken grin, letting the rage build behind her eyes silently as she stared him down.

'The sins of the fathers pass to their brats.' Her captor spoke again, lifting his blade to her cheek; the sharp edge biting shallowly, tracing a crimson line down the contours of her face. She was numb to the pain; something as insignificant as a scar could not hold her down now, not after that. She might never be able to avenge herself on her assailant, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her beg. She would stare death in the eyes unto the last. She owed her father that much.

'After all, blood is so much thicker than water,' Adam continued, moving his sword to hover level with her neck. She tuned out Winter and Blake's screams of anguish, spitting curses at their captor and pleading with him for her life in alternate breaths; Blake cursing her mentor's name, yet still begging that it was _her_ Adam wanted, not her friends; let him take her instead. Winter's voice rang shrill in the air; _I'm the elder sister,_ it pleaded, _My death will send the greater message, let my sister go!_ Weiss heard them as if from afar, a forgotten echo, appreciated but ignored. She would face death here and now, and let her father take pride from beyond that his daughter stared into the abyss without even a flinch, like a Schnee should.

'So much thicker…want to see?' The blade whipped back above Adam's head and thundered back down faster than the eye could follow; the finality of destiny locked onto Weiss' mind as her brain fought to calm herself, to make peace, to face the void with her head held high, heart hammering its final beats in her throat…

…Then she realised the blade hadn't landed.

An outstretched hand, gloved, bleeding slightly from the deep cut that Wilt had scored along its palm, had caught the sword a foot from Weiss' throat. The shock in Adam Taurus' eyes was palpable even behind his mask, the White Fang leader unable to process what his senses were telling him.

A series of explosions rocked the ground beneath Weiss' feet, and she dared for half a moment to look around as the cacophony of noise and the sudden, blazing firestorm threw the assembled commandos from their feet. Her ears popped, the ringing too much for her senses to handle, but her peripheral vision catching something which made her heart soar; a strange, willowy figure in red, face hidden behind a leering Nevermore mask, scything through the scrambling White Fang soldiers with an enormous blade, and a girl with a very recognisable shade of golden hair, scarlet eyes aflame, pummelling commandos left, right and centre with a single, deadly arm and a cacophonous volley of shotgun blasts.

She didn't have time to process much however before her attention was drawn back to her immediate surroundings by a pained voice very close to her ear; the voice that belonged with the hand holding Wilt at bay seemingly without effort or strain; elbow bent, aura shimmering in its owner's defence as semblance and raw muscular power overcame the executioner's strike. The owner of said had was a tall, blonde man in a dusty brown jacket, eyes bloodshot from a pain and worry that only a parent could know. Eyes locked onto the suddenly, and very visibly afraid Adam Taurus with a murderous intensity. The man's voice, the sound that had drawn her gaze, had a tormented tone, with a steely glint, as though his tenor was a whetstone that had sharpened so many blades it had gained an edge all of its own.

'My name is Taiyang,' said the voice, 'you hurt my little girl…and now I'm going to rip out your guts.'

 _ **Sorry again for taking so long guys, hope you like the update! During the scene with the boat in Wolf Harbour, I figured it only appropriate to insert each volume's dose of pure, metal badass into that bit. Feel free to imagine Ghost-Pyrrha standing on the back of the speedboat shredding Jeff Williams guitar solos as it flies through the air. I couldn't actually write it, because then this would officially turn into a crack fic, but if it makes it more metal in your mind, do it, and crack open the mead barrel while you're at it like the Viking you are!**_

 _ **Thank you to everyone who's reviewed, followed and favourited so far, your support means more than I can do justice to in words!**_

 _ **Next Time: Chapter 6 – Looking For A Heart.**_


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